


White Rice

by LokiOfSassgaard



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:15:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6317938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiOfSassgaard/pseuds/LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft isn't the only Holmes brother with an unhealthy relationship with food.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Rice

Sherlock didn’t eat when he was on a case. This much was made very clear from the very start.

“Digesting slows me down,” he said. Everything else was transport, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Most of their cases were fairly small – tediously predictable, as Sherlock would put it – and would be over in a day or two. After the suicides, the first thing Sherlock had started talking about was a Chinese restaurant nearby. It hadn’t immediately registered with John that, despite Sherlock only having just moved to the area, he knew all the good restaurants within half a mile. After all, the man did apparently run around the whole of London like a complete lunatic, so it made a vague sort of sense.

When they didn’t have a case on, Sherlock would have epic strops that would put even the most emo teen with the blackest of black nail polish to shame. John quickly learned to ignore it, though. And he would eat, which made John worry, if only s lightly less. He wouldn’t eat anything that had been made in the flat, tea notwithstanding. He would only order takeaway, and only from a very specific selection of restaurants, the menus of which all lived in a shoebox under his chair.

Then there was the case that ran long. It was supposed to be a simple matter of inheritance, but it became frustratingly complicated when a string of violent crimes and a hyperactive dog became inexplicably linked. Of course, this had all sent Sherlock practically squealing with delight as he ran around chasing leads that John found confusing at best.

It wasn’t until they closed on the fourth day that John had realised that Sherlock had been surviving on a diet of tea and nicotine patches (and, although he had no evidence for it, he began to suspect for the first time that maybe Sherlock wasn’t as clean as he liked to claim).

Mercifully, it had all come to an end the next evening, when John was certain that Sherlock wa s about to pass out on the spot. He was about to order Sherlock to a restaurant, but before he had a chance, Sherlock had begun chattering wildly about a place only a block away from where they stood that did excellent curry. Sherlock only shut up about the curry when the waiter finally brought it to them, and then John wasn’t able to get more than two words out of Sherlock until after he’d managed to clear off every last grain of rice.

After that, he was back to normal, which was sulking around the flat, yelling at John for stupid things, and abusing his violin. John noticed after a few months that the takeaways Sherlock would order would go through cycles. After the case with the dog, Sherlock would only order from Speedy’s, downstairs. After the next case, they ate far more pizza than two grown men ever should. Then there was one particularly worrying fortnight where all Sherlock would eat were tuna sandwiches, prepared in a very particular way. But then the n ext case and it was business as usual for the next three days.

John did notice that Sherlock never tried to force any of these rituals – which is what he soon realised they were – on him, and for that he was quite grateful. Sherlock made it very clear that John was free to eat what he wanted, when he wanted. Of course, most times it was simply easier to eat whatever Sherlock had ordered, rather than spend money on something else for himself.

It hadn’t escaped John that whatever restaurant Sherlock would insist on after a case had nothing at all in common with whatever was next on his completely boring and predictable repetition of meals. If he did vary, it would be only slightly. A change in sauce, or white rice instead of brown. Every now and then, he would spend a few weeks doing different sorts of pasta dishes, but always from the same restaurant. When John pointed out that there wasn’t much variety in what he actually would order, because pasta is pas ta, and the same sauce was used on everything, Sherlock had stopped eating for three days just to prove a point.

What point he was trying to prove, John never did figure out, but he had the feeling that it had something to do with him being an irritating bastard or something.

He’d tried to tell Sherlock that a variation in his diet was important, but that went ignored. Once when John had decided to bring home a different sort of tea, rather than just the Twinings breakfast tea that they always had, Sherlock spat it out onto the floor. He almost threw the cup, and probably would have done if John hadn’t been so quick to take it from him.

John couldn’t figure out of this was some sort of control thing, or something else. When they were on a case, Sherlock hardly seemed to care what he was drinking, as long as it had caffeine. A few times, when tea or coffee hadn’t been available, Sherlock had substituted it for a Red Bull instead, which only made him even more impossible to keep up with.

It hadn’t taken long before John banned him from drinking the stuff outright.

It was an eggroll and orange chicken week when John finally decided to put an end to this absurd behaviour. It wasn’t healthy for Sherlock and positively maddening for John. He tried ordering something from an Italian bistro, and managed to get it up to the flat before Sherlock started sulking about the whole ordeal. John had been determined to get Sherlock to eat something other than the usual, but when it became clear that the only way this would happen would be for John to have to force feed him, he gave up. If Sherlock wanted to be painfully boring and predictable all the time, then that was his own problem.


End file.
